A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from imposing a set of new conditions on states that receive federal SNAP food aid money, at least for now. The ruling halts the administration's effort to tie the funding to a list of policy requirements that a group of states had taken to court, freezing the conditions before they could take effect.
The decision came in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of 20 states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Those states had gone to court to challenge the White House's new conditions for receiving SNAP funding, arguing against the requirements the administration had sought to attach to the federal food aid money.
According to the states, the conditions tied the funding to several restrictions that reached well beyond the food program itself. They included measures related to gender ideology and to immigration, along with what the administration described as fair athletic opportunities for women and girls, a phrase quoted directly in the dispute.
With his order, the judge stopped those conditions from being enforced while the legal challenge moves forward. The practical effect is that, for now, the states in the coalition are not required to meet the contested requirements in order to keep receiving the federal SNAP money that the lawsuit was fighting to protect.
The judge did not lay out his full reasoning from the bench at the time of the ruling. He said he would issue a memo later explaining his decision, leaving the detailed legal basis for blocking the conditions to be set out in that forthcoming document rather than announced immediately alongside the order.